Weekly lectures on "The Citizen and the War" will get under way this afternoon with a talk by Joseph M. Loughlin at 4 o'clock in Emerson D. Sponsored by the War Service Committee, the address entitled "Opportunities for Civilians in the War" will open a series which the Committees hopes "will put information of value to all civilians into the hands of those best equipped to spread it throughout the country."

Loughlin is at present the director of the First Civilian Defense Region, the post recently vacated by James M. Landis, Dean of the Harvard Law School, when he went to Washington to become Director of the Office of Civilian Defense. Loughlin's talk will be followed by a question period.

Future speakers in the series, which will be continued at the same time and place each week of the first session, will include an English Air Raid Warden, Miss Lydia deRoth, and many others.

Miss deRoth's talk on Air Raid Protection will be followed by a speech on "Consumer Education, Conservation and Scrap." Future weeks will feature a talk by Robert Knapp, Chairman of the Massachusetts Bureau of Propaganda, and a discussion of "How to Pay for the War."